The Whiskey Tide (16 page)

     
"What d'ya say you and I go start a fire somewhere?" Peely breathed in her ear.

     
Aggie's arm was stiffening to push him away in annoyance when a smooth voice spoke behind her.

     
"Hey, pal. You don't mind if I dance with the lady, do you? Teach her some new steps?"

     
Aggie turned and felt a tremor, anticipation mingling with indefinable fear, an elixir more potent than overproof gin. Felix Garvey drew her up by the wrist and she followed him, unable to speak.

     
"Who sent you?" he asked when they reached the dance floor.

     
"I'll tell you that when you tell me you're interested."

     
Her heart was hammering. Her skin was on fire where he touched her. His eyes regarded her without feeling. His thin lips considered and then formed a smile.

     
"What makes you think I'd be interested in a business deal?"

     
"Word gets around."

     
He didn't plaster himself against her like Peely. The arm encircling her excited her with its coolness. Aggie felt the thrill. This was what she wanted, to match wits with a man like this, not someone like Peely with his pale ideas of seduction.

     
"And maybe you're just some little tramp looking for a way to meet me. Thinking I'll be good for a couple of dresses if you catch my eye."

     
His words almost made her catch her breath in. The insult and the snippet of truth.

     
"I know of a boat and a crew bringing booze down from Canada. They're hunting a customer," she said evenly. She'd show Felix Garvey she didn't throw tantrums or burst into tears like some silly showgirl. That she had guts.

     
This time she had startled him. She saw the pinprick reflex in his eyes and smiled. His fingers tightened.

     
"Do you, now? Whose boat?"

     
"A relative's. Are you interested?"

     
"I might know someone who would be. How big a boat?"

     
"Big enough to carry a thousand crates a trip."

     
"Maybe we should go somewhere and talk about it. Thursday night. I'll pick you up at half past nine. Where do you live?"
 
Aggie hesitated. It was his turn to smile.

     
"What's the matter? Afraid?"

     
"Of course not." Pangs of uncertainty gnawed Aggie's stomach. It couldn't harm anything, could it? He
was
interested. "Anyone in the booze business would be an idiot not to be prudent," she said boldly.

     
He laughed.

     
"I live out past The Willows. On Salem's Neck." She gave the address.

     
"What's your name? Your real name." His smile continued, but the line of his jaw held warning. "My acquaintances wouldn't do business with anyone they couldn't check."

     
Again Aggie felt a glimmer of doubt but nudged it aside.

     
"Aggie Hinshaw. Oliver Hinshaw's daughter."

     
If her father's name meant anything to him, he showed no reaction.

     
"Go back to your boyfriend," he said releasing her before the music stopped. "Nine-thirty Thursday."

     
She'd never been dumped on the dance floor before. She shrugged to show it didn't bother her. It was going to be the berries seeing Kate and Rosalie's faces when Felix Garvey called for her in his swanky car.

Ten

     
The Hinshaw girl was a long shot. Felix Garvey thought Hugo was crazy even to consider using her, but Hugo was boss. The guy had no judgment at all when it came to his pitiful attempts at paintings — even gave them as gifts — but in things that counted he was one shrewd bastard.

     
"How often can you deliver?" Hugo asked.

     
"Once a month, in the dark of the moon."

     
They were in the back room of a club in the cellar of a furniture store in Lynn. The Hinshaw girl was an eyeful in a yellow dress and a boa that matched her black hair. And Felix saw something in her wide green eyes that pleased him: She was scared.

     
"Boats are so thick you can hardly get to shore in the dark of the moon," Hugo grumbled. He was eating oysters.

     
"It reduces the odds you'll get caught," Aggie Hinshaw said boldly.

     
Felix stiffened. He'd told her to keep her mouth shut unless Hugo asked her a question.

     
"I know your uncle. Phinneas Taylor" Hugo said, fishing now. "He's got a good eye for profit."

     
"He's not involved."

     
"Who's your captain, then?"

     
"If I blabbed about that, I might blab about you."

     
Hugo chuckled. "Smart kid. I like that." He looked at Felix, who was lounging against the wall. "What do you think?"

     
Felix shrugged. He wondered idly what made his boss's complexion so blotched. It looked as if what little color was in his skin had curdled and separated.

     
Hugo sucked an oyster out. "I'll give you a try. If you work out this time then we've got a deal. Felix will let you know where to deliver."

     
"I'll need an advance," Aggie said. "A down payment."

     
Felix left the wall. He'd told her to keep her mouth shut. Hugo raised a hand signaling it was okay.

***

     
"You're a fool, Genevieve! The bank's had an inquiry from someone interested in the house. If you don't snap it up, who knows when you'll get a chance to sell at that kind of profit again? I'll invest the proceeds and find you a nice little place—"

     
"Phinneas, I can't! Not yet. Woody needs continuity. We all do! Perhaps in a few months—"

     
"In a few months you'll be out in the street if you don't listen to reason!"

     
Kate turned away from the angry exchange muffled by the closed doors into the parlor. This was the second time in a week her uncle had come and pressed her mother to put the house up for sale. There was something almost deceitful in his impatience, though surely his conniving went no further than lying about the money he'd owed. He wouldn't want to see his only sister suffer.

     
She went out and sat on the top of the beach stairs, waiting for Billy. The cuts on her palms had healed into scabs which were starting to itch. Today the postman had brought a letter from Rachel, who was to have been her roommate this year. Its lines of condolences reminded her of a world now lost. She refused to dwell on it. She watched the ocean instead. Above it a lone gull descended and wheeled. A brown gull, its cry sounding like a lament. Perhaps it was aware that fewer of its kind were being hatched along this stretch of shore, she thought, and with some animal knowledge lost to man, it mourned the dwindling of its species.

     
"Miss Kate? Peg said you wanted to see me when I was done." Billy had come up noiselessly behind her.

     
Kate gestured and he sat down shyly a few feet away.

     
"How's your mother?"

     
"Good now. She's always good when she has the medicine. I brought home a chicken yesterday and she stewed it with dumplings. Hasn't felt up to doing that for a long time. Hadn't had the money for a chicken either." He grinned. "I told her I was doing more around here now that Mr. Hinshaw was gone so she wouldn't wonder where the money come from."

     
Kate smiled in return.

     
"I need to see Mr. Santayna again. Will you ask him to meet me somewhere? Tomorrow if he could. Preferably someplace where he's not likely to get knocked through the window," she added.

     
Billy's grin widened. "We going to make another run, are we?"

     
Kate hesitated. She owed him an answer. She had depended on Billy to find the captain she needed. And though Billy's work-toughened hands hadn't been cut as deeply as hers, they bore fading blisters from the same ropes. The two of them had shared an adventure which sitting here now seemed impossible, and she realized it had joined them in an odd kinship.

     
"We might go again," she acknowledged with caution.

***

     
Joe Santayna was waiting for her in the reading room of the public library. Kate scarcely recognized him. He sat in a leather chair, wearing a gray tweed suit that was neither old nor new, absorbed in the current issue of
Harper's
. He looked up, rose and returned the magazine to its proper place and they walked outside.

     
"You don't look too much worse for your travels," he observed.

     
"No." In spite of the days they'd spent together, Kate felt awkwardness engulfing her. Being on the boat had been different. Here she was aware of his tallness, and his scent of shaving cream. "I... wanted to talk to you," she said.

     
The long depressions on his cheeks flared briefly as though something in her words had amused him. "About another trip, Billy told me."

     
"Billy jumped to conclusions. But yes."

     
He settled a gray cap like her father had worn on his head and she looked away at the sudden reminder. They began to walk up Essex Street toward the heart of Salem.

     
"Week after next, when the moon's dark again. And you want me to captain again," he guessed.

     
Kate nodded. She wondered why she was finding this harder than it had been the first time. Maybe because Joe Santayna appeared more relaxed than she was. Because he had dabbled in things like this before, she reasoned. He must have, to know the things he did. Most likely he lived among people who took breaking the law in stride. She remembered his cheekiness with the policeman who'd kicked him.

     
"This time we'd only be bringing down three hundred cases, but I'll pay you the same."

     
"You want to make that same trip — take the same risks — for just part of a load?" He was flabbergasted. "Why?"

     
"That needn't concern you."

     
He ran a hand through his hair and tugged his cap back into place before he spoke again. To Kate's surprise anger sharpened his voice.

     
"Very well, Miss Hinshaw. But I know what the trip's like now, and I won't make it again for what you paid last time. How many cases you bring down's your business, but if you want me to sail for you again, the fee's double."

     
"Four hundred dollars? That's ridiculous!"

     
"To you, maybe. If we get caught, you've got your family's money to bail you out."